Maredumilli & Rampachodavaram

Many times I heard of maredumilli and Rampachodavaram  but never get a chance to visit those places. As part of the meetup organised by Surya Prakash, a friend of mine, through Travel India Cafe(http://www.meetup.com/theTIC/)  , I visited this place in Dec 2012. Maredumilli in East Godavari district is in the heart of undisturbed patch of Eastern Ghat forests, is one the best places to visit in Andhra Pradesh.

Location:
           Maredumilli is located at a distance of 85km from Rajamundry(Andhra Pradesh) on the Bhadrachalam road. Maredumilli forest comes under the Alluri sitaramaraju forest area.

How to reach maredumilli??
There are two ways to reach maredumilli, either from rajamundry or from Bhadrachalam. Better hire a vehicle for the whole trip from rajamundry or board any bus that is going towards bhadrachalam and get down at maredumilli.

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Places of visit:

In Maredumilli:
There are many places to visit in and around maredumilli. The best among them is Jalatarangini waterfalls. The waterfalls is located at a scenic location and better go to this place a little bit early in the morning. Nandavanam - bamboo and medicinal plants garden is also another worth place to visit but the maintenance of nandavanam is not so good. If you are staying at Vanavihari resort then you should go to the jungle star resort and enjoy the location and pamuleru stream. Swarnadhara, amruthadhara waterfalls is also another tourist attraction in maredumilli. There are many more tourist attractions in maredumilli.
In Rampachodavaram:
Rampa waterfalls is the top tourist attractions in Rampachodavaram. There is one ancient siva temple which is also very famous. 

Best time to visit:
                 The best time to visit Maredumilli will be after monsoon. During monsoon, this area receives huge amount of rainfall, that may play spoilsport in your trip. This place will be cool through the year during nights, but day may turn hotter during summer.

Where to Stay??
There are only two places where you can stay @Maredumilli. Vanavihari and Jungle star resorts are organised by the AP Forest department as part of the community based eco tourism project. Vanavihari has so many rooms with AC and it is best suited for couples or for small groups. If you are around 15-20 in number, then you can book tented accomodation @ Jungle star resort. But the drawback of jungle star resort is lack of food facility and also far away from the village main center. For booking and more information visit: http://www.vanavihari.com/accomi.php?page=accomi

Food:
                 There are many small hotels in Maredumilli and rampachodavaram. But the best place to eat in Maredumilli is @Vanavihar resort canteen. The food was awesome. Don't miss special bamboo chicken @Maredumilli. There is no specific shop to buy bamboo chicken, there are many shops in maredumilli. On the way from Rajamundry from maredumilli, gokavaram is the only place where you can get some good food.

Our Trip:

               We were 12 people started from hyderabad at 9PM and reached rajamundry at around 8AM. The journey was so horrible due to the worst condition of the road between khammam and rajamundry, also due to the apsrtc bus. So if any one wants to reach rajamundry from Hyderabad  better choose the highway passing through vijayawada instead of Khammam. After reaching rajamundry, we started to maredumilli on a tempo traveler and it took almost 2hrs. On the way we had breakfast @Gokavaram, which is sooo good. Finally we reached maredumilli and checkedin to the rooms which we booked @Vanavihari, Maredumilli.

                      Our plan for the first day was to trek for almost 12km inside the forest and return by evening. So we packed our lunch at the resort and started for the trek.We reached Jungle star resort and the first hurdle we faced was to cross the pamuleru stream, which is flowing at a good pace. If we don't cross the stream, we have to walk for around 1km extra, so only 5 brave souls(kidding..) including me decided to cross the stream and the rest walked to reach the other side of the stream. Stream crossing was the best part of the trip, chilling water, loose rocks, water flowing above my waist made me soo thrilling. 

         After crossing the stream, we joined the other members and started trekking deeper inside the forest. On the way we ate our packed lunch and trekked for almost 2hrs till we were exhausted. Crossing many small streams,  capturing different plant species, hearing variety of sound made by birds made our trek so memorable. We completed our trek at around 6pm and went to the village main center to have some snacks.

                Now comes the best part of our trip. We ordered Bamboo chicken in some shop near our resort and asked the canteen staff to serve that along with the dinner. The dinner was too good and i must admit that it is one of the best food I ate till date. After dinner we arranged campfire, where we enjoyed till late midnight. The whole campfire credit goes to dasarth and his friends.

                 Next day morning we woke up a little bit early and checked out the room. Our initial plan was to cover Jalatarangini, Swarnadhara and rampa waterfalls. But due to the time constraint we covered only Jalatarangini and rampa waterfalls. Jalatarangini waterfalls is situated in awesome location, very scenic. We spent for almost 1hr near the waterfalls and stared toward the rampa waterfalls.  On the way to Rampachodavaram  we stopped near bhupathi palem reservoir which is also located in the scenic location. Rampa waterfalls is situated at a distance of 5km from Rampachodavaram  We have to park our vehicles at one place and have to trek for some distance to reach waterfall. As we went on Sunday  there was huge crowd near the waterfalls, so we didn't get chance to enjoy the waterfall.

             From rampa waterfalls, we reached Rampachodavaram and had lunch at some local hotel. We thought of taking some rest @ Rampachodavaram and booked a room to fresh-up in the forest department guest house. The forest department guest house is very well maintained. At around 6pm we started towards rajamundry and reached rajamundry by 8PM. We boarded our bus @9PM to Hyderabad and with that our two day trip to maredumilli and Rampachodavaram came to end.

My Trip Mates....

Happy Traveling.....
For more information about the eco tourism projects in andhrapradesh visit: http://www.mytraveltales.in/2012/02/andhra-pradesh-eco-tourism.html